Another Ice Age or Dark Age?

As a child, I used to go to the Outer Banks of North Carolina this time of year on family vacations.
We had planned on going again this year -- last week, in fact. I’m sure glad we didn’t.
Anyone with a television or an Internet connection knows about how Hurricane Irene swept up the East Coast and hit the OBX pretty hard.
Whenever wild weather happens, we can’t help but think the worst: global warming. Well, that’s what you call it if you’re a hippie. If you’re on the other side, it’s called climate change.
See, the far left thinks all business should cease until we can restore the planet to what it was like before the dodo bird became extinct.
The other side thinks global warming is B.S., that either the scientific data is wrong, or that the scientists are in a vast conspiracy to impose such an insidious belief on the masses. If the weather is changing, the argument goes, it could just be natural.
So, is it the beginning of a new Ice Age, as a certain faction of Republicans would have you believe, or is the far right trying to usher us back into the Dark Ages?
“I think we’re seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists that are coming forward and questioning the original idea that manmade global warming is what is causing the climate to change,” said Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry in an Associated Press story recently.
Maybe Perry is listening to the “scientists” who designed the Creation Museum in Kentucky that has dinosaurs running alongside Jesus and other characters from the Bible. The far right’s definitely not known for its artistic prowess, but they also seem pretty deficient on that whole science subject too.
But you are the people they are trying to sell on these ideas. Do you believe them?
If you don’t believe in the science of global warming, ask yourself why?
Take out all the specifics, the details, and it comes down to this question: Do you think human beings have an impact on Earth?
If you live in a house and don’t open the windows for years, what would it smell like in there?
If you never had any maintenance done on your car, how would it run in a few years?
Do you really think billions of people crawling all over the planet doesn’t have some sort of effect?
It’s not political. There’s no conspiracy. It’s common sense.
I’ll leave the rest to the scientists the far right scoffs at, the same discipline that brought you such crowd-pleasing favorites as penicillin, airplanes and television.
In this regard, the far right is trying to drag us back into the Dark Ages where people were burned at the stakes for having any sort of opinion that ran counter to the Church. Now, instead of the Church, there’s Big Oil and every other interest that is tied to burning fossil fuels.
Is it too progressive or liberal to believe in science?
I hope I can still be considered a moderate if I think that Newton’s theories on gravity are OK. I hope I’m not considered a hippie if I believe the Earth is, in fact, round.
When it comes down to it, if you’re having a heart attack or stroke, do you want the science of rational folks who believe in evolution and global warming, or do you want a faith-based doctor -- I think they call them preachers -- at your side?